


Eternal—And We Really Mean It, No Shirt (Pilot)

by executrix



Category: The Good Place (TV), UnREAL - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 02:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: Quinn King walks into a bar and meets…Chidi Anagonye! Fiendish TPTB, miniature aggressively backstabbing subordinates, an impossible task…taping in the Good Place ain’t Quinn’s first time at the rodeo.





	Eternal—And We Really Mean It, No Shirt (Pilot)

1  
Quinn King raised a finger, nodded for “same again” and ogled as the lissome waiter brought her a third Aviation. When she was alone, she just sloshed vodka, or for that matter, bourbon, or rye (red and yellow, brown and white, they were precious in her sight) over not enough ice to sink the Titanic. But when she was in a bar, her orders were designed to keep them on their toes.

Quinn thought that if they ever had another Suitress—not likely, after that clusterfork—(Quinn blinked, wondered if she was thinker than she drunk she was but concluded, correctly, that it was an environmental effect) all the waiters in this bar would merit at least an audition. Preferably parading around in Speedos with trays held overhead. She reminded herself to get some new cards so she could hand them out with the tips and a leering suggestion of an “audition.” She couldn’t remember where she actually was but for some reason it didn’t bother her.

This latest season had the advantage of a high hot guys:pain-in-the-tuchus women ratio, a situation she didn’t expect to encounter again. Quinn didn’t think Network would ever deliberately have a gay season. Alexei she filed less under “gay” or “bisexual,” more “coke whore,” and since their business was digging up skeletons naturally some of them would be in a closet. 

She was about to say the hell with it, go back to her hotel room—which actually was a cute chalet with a remarkable resemblance to her under-construction house-- and channel-surf while eating room service when a man hovered at the door for a minute or so, then dashed forward. She deduced that he was the person who had contacted her to set up the appointment. She assumed he was from the studio, although he never said that.

Quinn looked him up and down, deciding that she had no objections to a Blifey as long as there was only one in the initial group. And perhaps, if he made it past the first week or two, there could be a Hometown Date that outfitted him in something other than flood-level pants and a regrettable heliotrope shirt with plastic collar stays. 

“Dr. Anagonye, I presume?” He nodded, clutching the stack of pages to his chest protectively, then placing them on the table and sitting down. Quinn flagged down the waiter and ordered Chidi a nice hot toddy to calm him down. 

“What, they’re all blank and you want me to give the Lubitsch Touch to them?” Chidi, befuddled, only shook his head. 

“I guess I should start at the beginning. Although that gives credence to a narratological paradigm that valorizes ‘beginning’…”

There was a sound that was later determined to be Eleanor blowing a raspberry. Chidi started again. “Ms. King, what is it that you think brings you here? And, for that matter, how would you define ‘here’?” 

“An indie net brought me in to pitch. They sent a helicopter, so, no airport, no ticket, no baggage limit. I don’t really remember the flight, though. From what I could see between my hotel and here, it’s some kind of cutesy little film festival town. Mountains, maybe? Doesn’t look exactly like Sundance, and maybe it’s, you know, a Disney constructed thing, like Celebration. They sure pour heavy for Disney, though.” She thought about getting another drink, reconsidered and wiggled a finger for the waiter to bring the tapas menu. “And then you contacted me, and since I’m here anyway, I agreed to take the meeting.”

“Hmmm. I wouldn’t say that’s completely wrong.” He opened his mouth to explain the whole post-mortem thing, hesitated, and downshifted to “And why do you think you’re here?”

“Reading between the lines, it sounds like they want a knock-off of Everlasting, but with some carpola” (Quinn blinked) “about how it’s really Eternal and they mean it. So, probably nutbag religiosos, but I repeat myself. The show’s on hiatus, and Chet is, like, 24-7 on his custody case, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to come and pitch. And of course it’s going to be phony as hell, but it’s not really a scripted show, so, sorry not sorry, I can’t use your screenplay.”

“This is not a screenplay.” Chidi shuddered at the implication he would be guilty of such a thing. “This is documentation. Ms. King, everything they told you is a lie. Or, at least, they didn’t tell you the whole truth.” 

“Call me Quinn. So? You think I believed them? In never-you-mind-how-many-years in the Industry, everything anybody ever told me was a lie. I should be upset because?”

“The pages are everything my friends and I have been able to discover about our situation. Although you will be told that this is the Good Place, and everyone here has been rewarded for their competitive exemplary lifestyle, in fact it is all an elaborate sham to torture me and my three friends. Everyone else you encounter here is, in fact, a demon, and we desperately need your help to avoid being exiled from here and sentenced to an eternity—there’s that word again—of torture, this time physical, in the Bad Place.”

Quinn shook her head. TPTB that would squander that kind of money on just four humans was the kind of studio she wanted to pad her expenses to. 

Chidi stood up and waved over the rest of Team Cockroach, who had been waiting five tables away for an hour. Eleanor, leaning her elbows on the table and her chin in her cupped hands, was really, really bored. Tahani, leaning back in her chair and swaying her mule back and forth on her dangling foot, was enthralled. She was reading Middlemarch on the off-chance she ran into anyone among the many people she had told it was her favorite novel. She hadn’t had enough time to get far enough realize she wasn’t supposed to identify with Rosamond Vincy. Jason wasn’t bored at all, he had a new Jacksonville Jaguars game on his phone and still hadn’t figured out that it was impossible to win.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Chidi said after doing the introductions.

“Yes, isn’t breaking in a new pair of Louboutins *hell*? Tahani said sympathetically. “I mean, if it were truly the Good Place, you could have a new pair whenever you liked and they’d fit properly from the off. Or perhaps all shoes would be custom…”

Quinn thought that next to Tahani, Serena would look like a hobbit hobo.

In just one look, Tahani and Quinn realized that they hated each other, but they had to work together, so Tahani would pretend to love Quinn and Quinn would abstain from hunting down a Chinese supermarket so she could dust Szechuan ma-la powder over Tahani’s tampax. Tahani envied Quinn’s sharp bob and sharper wardrobe. Quinn curled a mental lip at Tahani’s half-a-Marie-Antoinette-milkmaid getup, but couldn’t help being impressed by the amplitude of her hair and her…amplitude.

“So what we have in common is being an ex-parrot. Which saves less taxes than being an expatriate. Were any of you murdered?” Quinn asked idly, an elevator pitch for “Spectral Victims Unit” sketching itself in her head.

“Accident,” Chidi, Eleanor, and Tahani chorused.

“Well, technically I was felony-murdered, but by me,” Jason said cheerfully. 

After a prawnographic supper, an attempt was made at a team movie night, but they couldn’t agree on anything . A number of contenders, from Slap Shot 2 to a film about an adolescent female Sami reindeer herder, garnered two votes apiece. So Quinn went back to her hotel room. She wrapped up in a Turkish waffle robe, slathered on an inch of face cream (regretting all the Juvederm she would never get to get), put cucumber slices over her eyes, and plotted strategy for the next morning’s meeting. 

She also regretted that she would have to either read or not bother to read the wodge of papers that Chidi delivered, because Death Means Nobody Gives You Coverage. She was now far away from Rachel. Far away from Madison, a street name that Quinn considered far too classy for someone who should have been called Eighth, Near the Lincoln Tunnel Entrance.

2  
In the morning, there wasn’t any point in any further Eleanor-related adverse weather events, because they weren’t fooling anybody anymore so the day dawned gloriously. Quinn picked up a breakfast of macchiato and a brioche bun filled with chocolate gelato and raspberries from a cart called Croissanta Lucia and made her way to Michael’s office.

“Ms. King! Hello! Any relation to Martin Luther?”

Quinn blinked. “I guess with the Southern branch of my family, you never know.”

“Any questions about the Good Place I can answer for you?”

“So, what happened to me?” Quinn drawled.

“Uhmmm,” Michael said. “Well, it seems that Gary Taylor went around telling everyone that he wanted your head on a platter, more than ever, and apparently a first-year associate at the firm handling the first batch of his sexual harassment suits, who, like most people who elect to follow the legal profession, is extremely literal-minded…”

“Euww,” Quinn said, fingering her throat, which felt a little crepey but not actually severed. “They get caught?”

“Mr. Taylor got your former paramour to testify to a Congressional subcommittee that the unknown assailant was driven insane by subliminal messages hidden in Sesame Street. So they defunded PBS in your memory. Killed two birds with one stone, so to speak.” 

“My knight in shining Armani,” Quinn said, consoling herself with the thought that the starlet or intern or cater-waitress Chet inevitably banged during her wake was almost certainly over the age of consent. Or maybe he got back together with his ex-wife until she threw him out again.

“So, to get back to the matter at hand, I…well, I wasn’t completely candid with you.”

“Awww, no! Are you also going to tell me that when Santa Claus wrestles the Tooth Fairy, it’s fake?”

“Your friends have been told that everyone here has a soulmate, and that Eleanor and Chidi, and Tahani and Jason—well, we told her he was a mute Buddhist monk. This turned out to be a waste, they didn’t pay any attention to the whole soulmate thing, although they did do some of that misdirected genetic frustration thing you people are so big on. And even though we thought that it would generate real agony…oh, you’re not interested in all that water-cooler stuff. The pretense for bringing you here is to produce a show where a highly telegenic person selects a soulmate. Which is ridiculous, of course, because if there were such a thing as a soulmate you wouldn’t have any choice in the matter.” 

Quinn spent a minute tut-tutting about how obvious it was that Mister and Ms. Snooty PridePrejudice were made for each other (although Chidi was no Colin Firth in the wet-linen-shirt stakes). Then she just shrugged, realizing that they were handing out torture, not romance. And failing, at that. 

“And, although as they say, you’re a long time dead, so you’d think you’d have all the time out of the world, Upfronts are in three weeks so we need at least a rough cut.”

“Wait, you have Upfronts? Yeah, no, of course you do. Carry on.”

“Invented by the same Architect who invented the celebrity roast,” Michael said proudly. “But the problem is that, under the pretense of producing a reality show, I need you to come up with some film that will convince my boss that human beings are not as utterly worthless as we all think they are. Well, I’ve sort of come around, but I’m a deviant.”

“Uh-huh. An Up With People mini.”

“Cheese and crackers got all muddy, can’t you people ever think about anything else?”

“Not that kind of Up, it was an unduly optimistic singing group from the seventies. You wanna know how bad things got? I miss Jimmy Carter.”

“So you get an unlimited budget, all the resources you need, but of course you’ll have to watch your back every minute, you’re working with demons.”

“Blah blah fishcakes, I’ve been dealing with the IA since you were…I don’t know, 759? 1207?”

Meanwhile, behind Quinn’s back, strategizing continued. “Yes, why don’t we meet in your adorable tiny house?” was Tahanese for “over my prostrate dead body,” so they were in the BudHole, which was more conducive to snacking than the palatial setting upstairs.

“I feel far more sanguine about our prospects now, with our cadre expanded by our new team-mate,” Tahani said. “It’s obvious that she’s a tremendously talented woman, although as an American perhaps she lacked the opportunity to understand the value of subtlety in bespoke tailoring. “

“I wish she wouldn’t try to explain everything by stuffing it into her stupid TV show,” Eleanor said around a large mouthful of Nutella nachos.

“But isn’t everyone’s Weltanschauung somewhat narrow? When a thief looks at a holy man, all he sees is his pockets.” (A bedazzled Chidi was in the grip of non-MILF fever; he found Quinn trying to draw up a dictionary of Good Place euphemisms on a yellow legal pad, and was smitten when she said, “You have taught me language and the profit on’t is I don’t know how to curse.”.)

“But that’s, like, so dumb,” Jason said. “’Cause holy men wouldn’t have anything in their pockets. Thieves should look at the pockets of, you know, loansharks. Or drug kingpins. Except, when you go up against the king, you best not lose…Hey, is she that kind of king?”

There was a chorus of “No.”

“Except,” Jason said, “it’s also dumb to do the thing where you say you’re going to heist off the Mob because they can’t go to the cops. Because they’re going to, like murder you to the max so it doesn’t help.” 

3  
Quinn called a production meeting; although only Eleanor and Vicky were officially on the payroll, the rest of Team Cockroach tagged along. “If I hear the word ‘mother,’ it better be followed by ‘forker,’” Quinn warned Eleanor and Vicky. Tiny, duplicitous, power-hungry nutballs. Same-same. At that rate she wondered why she even bothered to be dead.

“I looked at your reel,” Quinn said. Vicky blinked at this Foggy-Bottom level of obvious fabrication. “And that artsy vaguely nouvelle gar-bazh isn’t going to cut it. Eleanor is the one with more practical experience, so she’s going to be walking point. Vicky, you’re producing Chidi, Jason, Tahani, and Eleanor herself. Eleanor, go through the list of everyone in town—are there what, voter registrations? a telephone book? driver’s licenses?”

“We have a DMV!” Vicky said enthusiastically, then reminded herself not to brag about who invented it.

“But there are no cars!” Jason said. 

“There are, however, trolleys,” Chidi said, grimacing and passing his hand over his face reminiscently. 

“Pick six who are telegenic,” Quinn said. “Not necessarily pretty like a Chris, but…interesting. Maybe rugged. Here, I wrote some interview starters for you. We’ll run some tape, see how it cuts together. It’s a carpshoot.” Quinn looked up, unsure who she was complaining to. “I’m not swearing! It’s a game of chance.” Then she returned to her original point. “If we don’t get what we need, pick six more.”

“What if they don’t want to be interviewed?” Eleanor asked

“Everybody wants to be on TV,” Quinn said. “I mean, you don’t even have to give them the monogrammed earwax extractor or whatever we had a product placement for, much less get them laid. And even less marry them off. People who know there’s a highly honed machine to humiliate them and make them make fools of themselves in public will line up, just because it’s public.”

4  
Vicky figured that, with Eleanor busy with her interviews, she should be scheduled last. As in never. She started with Jason.

“What I’m looking for in a soulmate is, she has to be a human. Because humans rock. I mean, maybe here rocks are human, are they? Like, on Steven Universe? I think they were human, my bro SuperEight was really into it, I tried to watch it, but the drawings were fug.”

“OK, cut and print,” Vicky said.

Then she told Tahani that Wardrobe sent over the overalls and Adidas so Tahani had to wear them. “Soulmates…what a wonderful concept,” Tahani said. “It goes right to the heart of the human soul. Well, perhaps that is not the best metaphor. But being soulmates lead to families. And there is no deeper and purer love than the love of families for some of their children. It is truly inspiring.”

Then Vicky ordered the cyclorama repainted and told the lighting director she was interested in some unusual effects. Then she went out for lunch. What with the moody lighting and the charcoal-gray cyc, all that could be seen of Chidi, perched on a high stool with one rather short leg, was teeth and an eldritch red reflection of the camera light in his glasses. Which rather backfired, because that directed all the attention to his resonant voice ringing with sincerity.

“It’s hard to define exactly what it is to be human,” he said. “Do you look at the worst, the killing fields, enslavement, concentration camps? Or do you look at the soaring creations, the cathedrals, the symphonies, the endless quest for knowledge, whether in the form of an equation or a work of philosophy?”

5  
“So,” Eleanor said, “What’s the best thing about humans?”

“Biting them!” Gunnar said. “You know, that’s my passion project! Livin’ the dream!”

“Cut!” said Eleanor. 

6

Shawn spread his fingers and the dailies that Vicky sneaked out to him appeared in front of him. 

“What a piece of *work* is a man,” he said, shaking his head.


End file.
